If you missed it Make blog did a nice interview with me regarding my affiliation with Applied Kinetic Arts.  I’ve reposted the text below.  You should also go check out the interviews they did with Nemo, Ben and Jeremy.

The Rocket Stop fabrication is in full swing!

Fabrication of the Rocket Stop should be gearing up over the next week.  Here are the most recent CAD images:

Almost Science, Always Art

BY LESLIE W. CHINN

Alan Rorie is a neuroscientist by training. These days, however, you’re more likely to find him using an MIG (metal-inert gas) welder to send sparks skimming over a cool slab of metal than peering at glowing monkey neurons through a microscope.

From Neurons to the Neuron Chamber

Not too many years ago, Rorie was a graduate student at Stanford University, investigating the amalgamation of different types of information in the cortexes of macaques during the decision-making process.

Now, Rorie amalgamates metals (and sometimes other materials) into works of art in a process that he calls “almost scientific.” This is also the name of the science and art collaborative that Rorie founded, as well as the name of his website, www.almostscientific.com. The goal of Almost Scientific, the collaborative, is to “educate scientists about art and artists about science” through the creation of art pieces that tend to be quite large, with moving parts.

Rorie always has been intrigued by moving parts— as a child, he says he was “really interested in taking stereos and blenders apart and putting them back together.”  He also loved to read and write stories, which eventually led him to study the humanities in college. But, Rorie began to feel that the true source of being able to understand and appreciate the humanities was rooted biologically, in the brain. “What makes a great painting or symphony really has to do with how you perceive it,” says Rorie, “so I became very interested in the neuroscience of perception.”

By the time Rorie discovered that neuroscience wasn’t yet able to explain how the brain experiences art, he had nonetheless become intrigued. “I was already hooked on just understanding the brain and how it works,” he remembers. To this end, Rorie did a stint at the National Institute of Mental Health, then moved to California for graduate school.

Slowly, however, Rorie began to see that his future was not at the bench. It took a while for him to decide that he wanted to focus on, as he puts it, “art and creative pursuits.” Arriving at this conclusion wasn’t easy, particularly because everyone, including himself, thought of Rorie as a scientist.

The Process of Creation

In his studio in West Oakland, Calif., Rorie creates works with fantastical names: the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, the Triaparator and the Neuron Chamber. This last work is an “electro-kinetic sculpture” that demonstrates what neurons are and what they do. And, yes, it uses electricity: 9,000 volts make for an impressive action potential as they arc, a blinding blue light, down axons made of metal.

Rorie not only is interested in teaching nonscientists about neurons— he also would  like them to understand the mechanical workings of the Neuron Chamber. “In the sense [that] I can teach either the scientific content of my sculpture or the physical mechanics of it,” he says, “I am happy to do that.”

Rorie appears to derive a great deal of satisfaction from the design and construction of his work. Because many of his pieces are large and have moving parts, he makes use of engineering techniques— for example, CAD (computer-aided design) programs during the planning process— as well as tools intended for more industrial purposes, such as the MIG welder.

“A lot of the really large-scale pieces that I work on require a tremendous amount of engineering,” says Rorie, “and that is a huge part of the challenge and the fun and the beauty of these pieces.” He seems to revel in the process of creation, or as he puts it, “figuring out how to take something crazy and make it real.” This also is part of the message of Rorie’s works— to inspire people with the way he has taken a material as strong and rigid as metal and molded it to represent something as delicate as a human neuron.

As in science experiments, meticulous planning in art only goes so far. Nothing ever comes out the way you planned it, Rorie says, so you always have to be ready to adapt to the reality of the work. “At a certain point, you stop telling the work what it’s going to be,” he explains, “and it starts telling you what it is.” But, unlike many scientists, for whom the ultimate thrill is seeing their work published, the excitement is over for Rorie once a piece is done. “It’s more the process that’s important to me— it’s more the thrill of doing than the thrill the final product brings.”

Action, Reaction

Science and art may seem to exist in separate spheres, but Rorie believes that ultimately, they’re both about communication. It’s the direction in which the two are communicating  that’s different, much like a reaction that can run in two different directions. The way Rorie sees it, scientists generate conceptual abstractions to explain physical phenomena, whereas artists generate physical embodiments of their abstract ideas, thoughts or knowledge. The Neuron Chamber was an experiment in this concept for Rorie: He wanted to take his knowledge of neuroscience and communicate it via a sculpture of “high-voltage, robotic neurons in an alien observation tank.”

So, was the experiment successful? Paul Doherty, founding director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, thinks so. He watched people interact with Rorie’s Neuron Chamber while it was installed at the museum. “As the visitors figured out what was happening, they could predict aloud what the spark would do next, then laugh if they were correct, or moan if they were not,” Doherty recalls. “[They] had been drawn into the world of sparks and neuron modeling.”

Rorie often creates pieces that move, light up, or spew sparks or steam. He does this not only because he enjoys the engineering challenge but also because it makes the art more “alive.” Kinetic art has “action and reaction to the world around it,” Rorie says. “It gets touched and moved; it wears down.” In a way, the moveable aspect of Rorie’s art is a continuation of the bidirectional communication experiment. Moving parts encourage people to interact with the art, which means that Rorie’s pieces sometimes wear out or break. He doesn’t mind— in fact, he likes to fix them because it gives him something to do at gallery shows.

“The Path Is That Simple”

For bench scientists who yearn for the freedom of arc welding, Rorie has this advice: find something you love and do it, and soon you’ll get to be it. He expands upon this in two parts. The first is that there isn’t necessarily a formal process for every step of one’s career. “You don’t need to apply,” he says. “If you want be a carpenter, you just go and be a carpenter. The path is that simple.”

The most difficult step may be overcoming one’s self-identification as a scientist, as it was for Rorie. So here’s the second part of his advice, which is more of a pep talk for those who don’t view proficiency with a confocal microscope as a skill that can be translated to another line of work: “Your education as a scientist is deeper and stronger than just the field in which you work.” Rorie notes that while he doesn’t do science anymore, he uses the skills that he learned as a graduate student every day.

Besides, says Rorie, as a scientist, “you are on the cutting edge of knowledge— so why can’t you do anything else that you imagine doing?”

While installing the Steampunk Treehouse at Dogfish Head Brewery we stayed at the beach “resort” town of Rehboth.  On one of our last nights, when most of the work was over, I went out with my lovely 50mm/1.4 and tried to capture the unique boardwalk vibe that I had been living in for the past two weeks.

Here is the final photo set from Five Ton Cranes recent permanent instillation of the Steampunk Treehouse at Dogfish Head Brewery!

Here are some  video highlights from the first three days!

At this very moment I am with the rest of the Five Ton Crane Crew in Milton, Delaware (Rehoboth Beach, really) installing The Steampunk Treehouse for the very last time.

Why is this the last time?  Well, it is now part of Dogfish Head Brewery!

The install is going well, and the folks at the brewery are amazingly cool and incredibly excited to get the house. We’ve just begun the install, and we’ve not had any time to get proper photos or video together, but it’s all going really well.  I’ve been posting some updates on twitter if you want to stay up to date on the install. I’ve built a whole new set of apertures for them, and there are lots of other new details we’ve added, so I’ll be sure to get some photos of all that.

Also, there is a film crew from the Discovery Channel here who are doing a series on the brewery, and they’ve been focused on us for the past few days. They have gotten some great footage.  The show won’t air until January, but we’ve been told the Treehouse install will be the subject of one of the 45-minute episodes.

In other news:  The Raygun Gothic Rocketship has been 100% enthusiastically approved for a 14-month-long, public installation on the San Francisco waterfront at Pier 14! The landing is scheduled for August 8!  Yikes, that’s soon!

As part of that, the Almost Scientific team has been designing a Rocket Stop. What is a Rocket Stop?  Well, a Rocket Stop is to Rockets what a Bus Stop is to buses.  It will be a 11′-tall steel sculpture with a 40″ back-lit graphical display (graphically designed by by Five Ton Crane’s ever-awesome Jody Medich.)  There will be a lot more posts about that in the coming weeks.

A lot going on this summer!

Oh, and, The Raygun Gothic Rocketship was also just featured on Wired! Let David take you a nice tour of the RGR:

My limited edition papercraft models of The Raygun Gothic Rocketship are for sale on Makers Market.

I’m not going to say exactly how we got these.

But I will say there are several Tublians on Neblous-9 who risked a lot to get these to me. I hope none of them lost any gills.

There are Top Secret Rocket Corps documents (Dogstar clearance and higher!) that have full specifications and Materaliser specs for The Raygun Gothic Rocketship.

Normally these could produce a perfect, working Raygun Gothic Rocketship by printing on Piperarian Dimensional Flux Sheet, assembling it with nanobots and placing it in a 7-axis Materaliser.

However, because such technology is banned on Earth (don’t complain to me, send a beammail to your Universe Senator), I’ve printed them on on 100lb glossy paper.

You can use a sharp knife and some adhesive to make yourself a scale, paper model of The Raygun Gothic Rocketship.

For $12.50 you get a full papercraft model printed on 100lb. glossy paper that we mail to you.

Join the Rocket Corps today!

I’ve had this small Aperture that I made as a prototype for the Triaparator that has been kicking around my studio for a while.

Well, I’ve decided to turn it into a lamp.

Fitting huh?

It’s still has that raw, being-worked on look to it but it’s close enough to the final idea that I’m okay posting it.

The light source will go behind the small circle at the center of the aperture and throw light onto the copper hemisphere.

I’m going to use an LED for the light source. Normally, I avoid LEDs on old looking work like this, however, I’d like to sell this and an LED will last longer.

UPDATE (March 7th):  I finished the lamp in time for the Five Ton Crane group art show opening on Friday night.  The Flicker set below has updated photos of the finished lamp at the show.  It will continue to be on display for the next three weeks and is for sale for $600.00.  When I get a chance I’ll try to post an updated video of the aperture opening and closing with the light on.  The lamp is adjustable, it can rotate and pivot.

I know I’ve posted a video of some of the experiments we did involving evacuating the plasma tubes of the Uira Engine but I’m not sure I ever posted any video of this later tube design.

Wow.  I found this when I was cleaning out my laptop hard drive.  This is one of the first concept drawings Ben (of Backbone Metals fame) did when he and I were first planning The Neuron Chamber.  It’s amazing how close we got to these original drawings while still creating something entirely different.

I’m not sure if I’ve posted about it here (I’m loosing track of what I’ve been posting where) but I’ve been working on a papercraft model of the RGR in addition to the wooden model.  I really had no idea how hard it was going to be to design a nice papercraft model of the RGR.  It’s got so many funky curves and you can’t simplify them or you loose the whole shape.  Below are some photos of the current model.  This is nearly the final design, I still need to do the fin layout and then add some details (rivets, logo, doors, etc.) to the images.  I put this one together really fast just so I can see how well the design worked which is why the model looks a little sloppy.  I’m impressed with how well the main curve holds up to flattening and reassembly.

I’ve started working on a new lamp.  The idea for this came from two components that have been kicking around on my work bench for a while that I realized would work well together.  The first is one of those pneumatic things that prevents your trunk from slamming down on you which is now broken and only offers sleight resistance as it slides in and out.  The second is this strange, plastic, green thing that already mounted to an aluminum bit that just screams to have an LED put in it.

The first thing I did was quickly machine two stainless bits that screw on to the threaded ends of the pneumatic thing.  These are what I’ll use to attach the light and the base.

I did a quick CAD sketch to show all the basic movements it will have.

The pneumatic rod, now black, will be painted green to match the plastic green bit the LED will go in.

There is still allot to figure out about this one.

Oh, it’s called the Norgren Lamp because, the plastic bit was made by Norgren and still has there sticker on it.

Almost Scientific will be showing The Triaparator and some new odds and ends on Friday, March 5th.

The show is at 416 26th Street, Oakland, (Betw.Telegraph and Broadway)

This is the first show of the nascent Five Ton Crane.

A few weeks ago I posted about a few new sculptures I’ve started, none of which have any designs or plans, but are “make them up as you go along” projects.  One of them I’ve been calling Spinny or sometimes Spinny Thing and it’s going to, well spin.  The spinning is going to activate the sculpture much like a centrifugal governor and different kinetic elements will be engaged at different speeds.  The first step was to get the thing spinning so I can start to experiment.  Well, here are some photos of the mounting (I finally got to use that giant I-beam I’ve been lugging around for years) and a little video of Spinny Thing spinning under human control.

So one of the ideas I had while building the Rocket Sam papercraft model was to build some scale models of the Raygun Gothic Rocket that everyone would be able to build.

I’m doing the first in wood, and I just got done putting together a prototype.  This was laser cut out of 1/16″ plywood, it’s about 13″ tall, currently has 6 unique parts and is glued together.  There were some minor design problems with this first prototype, specifically, I made the slots where the pieces come together  a bit too big and I think that the 1/16″ ply is too thin for most people to work with (it was kind of annoying for even me to put together).  So, the next version will likely be out of 1/8″ ply, and have tighter slots.

When the design is locked in and detailed out, the models will be for sale here at Almost Scientific, the RGR webpage and any showings of the RGR we do.

For now, you’ll just have to enjoy the photos of the prototype:

Finally got a set of gears to build a prototype of the Deep Aperture